Eazesdropping

At the Christmas Party last week, I overheard Ms. F, the Special Education Director of our district, talking about how the district is taking back their mild to moderate Sp Ed program from the county. AND in doing so she is asking for more employees: LVN, SLP, and (drum roll please) a school psych! I about fell out of my seat! A possible job opening at Fairfield??? That is so awesome. Both Mr. P and Mr. H brought it to my attention as well (they were the ones actually having the convo with Ms. F, I was just listening in). Mr. P let me know the district always likes to hire those they know and that he would give me his endorsement (and he believed Mr. H would do the same) Mr. H wanted me to know about it, but also told me not to get my hopes up too much at this point as a lot of things can change before next August. Which is true, but I have to say, it is exciting that there is a remote possibility! Mr. H had told me earlier in the year that he anticipated more and more districts will begin taking back their programs from the county and it sounds like he was right as now I have heard that two different districts are considering it.
Guess I need to step up my game from here on out though, there is another intern at Fairfield so I have to make sure I shine. She knows her stuff so she will be pretty fierce competition should there be a position available!

RTI Program Evaluation

I think I've said this before, but one of my favorite parts of the world of school psychology is the diversity of it. You get to play counselor, mediator, assessor, writer, and problem solver. I've got to say, I love all the hats I get to wear in the profession. Your day is never filled with just one thing, well... most of the time that is. Yesterday was a day that lacked diversity. I did program evaluation of 9 students who participated in a Tier 3 reading intervention. You'd think, it's only 9 students, that's not very many so it won't take to long. Man I wish that had been the case. I seriously worked on that stuff for about 6 hours. This was mostly because I was creating the form and then making revision after revision after revision. It was a long day and I came home with some knots in my back from staring at the computer, BUT I think I finally got it. My end product looked nice and I understood all the components of it. Basically, we looked at the students participation using a dual discrepancy mind set. First we compared the students to their peers on grade level fluency passages, and how much their fluency had improved on grade level work. Then we looked at their rate of improvement and how it compared to other students at that instructional level (not grade level). In the end I wrote up a short paragraph that summarized everything and provided our recommendation. 2 of the 9 Kiddos are being referred for special education testing, two are being moved to a Tier 2 intervention, and the other five are staying put in Tier 3 for another round. It was an interesting process, I'm glad I got to see it.

We also went over a new way to do the dual discrepancy model that my supervisor is considering going to when looking at rate of improvement. He is running the stats on the grade level screenings to determine the standard deviation, that way he can show if a child's fluency rate of improvement is at least 1 standard deviation from the mean. I don't think it is a mandatory move or anything, but it does give a concrete guideline, which is nice.

RtI = The Killer

I had been pre-warned that upon entering a school you would be attacked by virus after virus. But I thought to myself, I'm all good. I worked with foster kids for 6 years. Uh no. I have now had 3 horrendous colds. Being the crazy worker bee that I am I have pretty much barreled through all of them and come to internship with a box of kleenex and a bottle of hand sanitizer, but the last one was a doozie and I ended up staying home on a Friday to recuperate! I really hope that was the last of them. It is, right? Pretty please with a cherry on top? I have pretty much been sick on an off for a month now, ick. I guess all those pre-warnings were true. Vitamin C will be my new best friend.

I really feel that RtI is to blame for all of this. I mean, RtI, what did I ever do to you?? All these grade level screenings are going to kill me. In the last two weeks I have probably read with around 200 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. It's like, how big of a germ pool can I expose myself to? Those kiddos are adorable little germ carriers though. I actually enjoy doing the screenings - I know, I know - I'm weird. Although I must say that I MUCH prefer the 1 reading prompt method over the 3 reading prompts. I know that the 3 gives you more reliable results, but to me it would be much more efficient to do 1 for all grade level and then due 3 for follow up for the bottom 25 percentile to make sure you've identified the kids who need to be identified or if a couple of them just had a bad day/were scared/were asleep the day they were initially screened.

In altogether unrelated news: I think I am changing my thesis to research social skills. I think it would be interesting to do a social skills group and do a pre and post test with the kids as my project. That way I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to do the work (like with my previous thesis idea) and I would also get some group counseling experience. It seems like a good idea to me. Supervisors #2 seemed open to the idea when I emailed him today, so we will see how it goes. I started researching curriculum this morning and I am really intrigued! 

What to do...

Oddly enough, today there was little to do. Yesterday I sent out the consent for assessment forms for the upcoming IEP and inputted my next IEP kid's info into the SELPA database. I was done with all my assessments for the school, caught up on all my emails, and prepared for my counseling sessions. I did have one kid to meet with for a 20-25 minute counseling session and that went smoothy (we talked about what "bugs" us and did and art project while we talked). But beside that there wasn't much to do. So I played with my current psych report, added in some tables to make it look neater, backed up all my files on my flash drive, wrote stupid joking emails back and forth with my other supervisor, and hung out in the special ed room. The day went by at a snails pace due to my lack of anything to do. But then all my behavior mod kids showed up at the same time (not my plan) so I had three kids in an extremely small space all fighting over the video game. Lovely, just lovely. I managed to shoe them all out of the room but one of them still ended up missing her bus so I had to march her up to the office to have her mom called. Bummer. But seriously, besides this maybe HOUR of work, I was pretty much sitting around researchering various topics of interest (my current one is kids who can read fluently but without comprehension - whats that about??) and designing a counseling game for next week (think candyland +problem solving questions). Not that those are not worthwhile ways to spend my time, but still I didn't feel like I met my productivity quota for the day. At around 2:30 I had the special education teacher mention to me that she needed some data regarding the previous intervention groups so I contacted my supervisor and asked if it was something I could do. It was. So I finally found my chore at 2:30. I ended up working until 5pm processing a pile of RtI intervention data. LOL, so at least I left the day feeling like I had accomplished something. Too bad it was only the last couple hours of the day!

Smooth operator

I presented my results at an IEP today and I must say, I felt it went really well! I was crazy nervous and the room was stifling hot (of course I had a sweater on to boot!) so I am sure my face resembled a smiling tomato during the meeting, but I still think it's been my best yet. The kid qualified via the RTI dual discrepancy model (kid was discrepant from peers in his rate of improvement in intervention AND in academics), and I came in with graphs in hand and ready to talk. There was an interpreter since mom only spoke spanish, but I think that help me pace the presentation of information much easier than when I am at an english speaking IEP. My supervisor only chimed in a couple of times and when it was over he told me I did well and he thought he'd only need to be present for a couple more before he could completely turn me loose! Nice! I will have plenty more practice in the next couple of weeks before Christmas Break, I think I have 2-3 more to do. But it was nice to walk away from one feeling like it had gone so well. I'm a happy intern tonight.

End of another Semester

22 classes D-O-N-E! 3 more to go until I am finished with this amazingly long program. Woot! When I enrolled in the program, Dr. B (the head of the program) looked and me and said, "Mrs.Z. these three years will be over before you know it. You will be shocked at how fast it goes." I nodded my head like a good little student and believed him. You know what? He lied. The past 2.5 years have seriously felt like forever. It is hard for me to remember a life without homework. A life prior to graduate school. But, I believe I did have one... I think... This program has been so consuming I have had to repeatedly reorganize my life to accommodate it. BUT only 1 16-week semester to go and then I will get to remember what it is like to have a life. Graduation is in May! Is it bad that I am already considering counting the days? 6 months to go. I've made this far, lets hope I can make it these last couple steps! Next semester doesn't start until the middle of January, so I do get a good size break from classes which will be nice. I am so in the mood for Christmas! I want to get all crafty and my my house extra cozy. Well, I best finish getting ready for internship. Got a couple kids to meet with for counseling today as well as my progress monitoring kids. Should be a rather mellow day, I like those. :)